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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080103">The Other Resident</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuasiOuster/pseuds/quasiouster'>quasiouster (QuasiOuster)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Good Doctor (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:47:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,327</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25080103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuasiOuster/pseuds/quasiouster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Claire does her surgical residency at a different hospital. But she and Neil cross paths in other surprising ways.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Claire Browne &amp; Neil Melendez, Claire Browne/Neil Melendez</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a story that I've been adding to piece by piece as work is keeping me busy. Thus, the different style and much shorter than my usual fare. And I wanted to do a much more divergent AU than I've worked with before. I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Claire remembers the day they met. She’d been bored in the ER having missed out on an earlier exciting surgery to her co-residents. The nurse on duty had been both irritated and amused at Claire’s restlessness as she counted down the hours.</p>
<p>And then he walks in the door. Or more like hobbles. Tall, dark, and handsome. Ridiculously fit. Intense, if the piercing stare he’s leveled at everything in front of him indicates. The paramedics look annoyed at his refusal to use a wheelchair. The patient looks even more annoyed that he’s ended up in the ER in the first place.</p>
<p>She practically runs down the hall to treat him … possibly for other reasons than just an excuse for something to do.</p>
<p>He’s the worst kind of patient. Bossy. Irritable. A know-it-all. She pegs him for a doctor within thirty seconds of their encounter. Probably a surgeon given his casual cockiness.</p>
<p>The source of his irritation isn’t the nasty sprained ankle she examines upon hearing his complaints, but that he isn’t at his own hospital, St. Bonaventure, getting treatment. The paramedics had brought him to San Jose Methodist as the closest hospital to the field where he’d been playing touch football and rolled his ankle catching a pass.</p>
<p>Claire tells him to get over it. That takes him aback.</p>
<p>He ends up getting a lot of time with her to practice getting over it as she shuffles him to an MRI he thinks is unnecessary. Yet the bite has gone out of his grumbles. And she ends up revealing a tricky fracture that requires a special setting.</p>
<p>She tries not to look smug. He tries not to look impressed. Both fail miserably.</p>
<p>He finally reveals that he’s a surgeon at St. Bonaventure – she smirks at her suspicions being confirmed. She reveals that she’s not on a trauma unit rotation but is a nearly second-year surgical resident who drew the short straw that barred her from a cool surgery. He seems appropriately sorry for her.</p>
<p>He then compliments her on her skills and chastises her for not working at his hospital. She admits St. Bonaventure had been her first choice, but a spot hadn’t opened up until after she’d started at San Jose Methodist.</p>
<p><em>'Our loss,'</em> he says, just shy of flirting. Claire has to fight the blush in her cheeks.</p>
<p>Once she confirms his treatment with her attending, wraps up his ankle, processes his discharge, and personally accompanies him to the parking area to wait for his Lyft, he passes her his card. In so many words, he invites her to reach out if she ever needs a second surgical opinion or partner for a research project.</p>
<p>Or maybe a dinner companion, he adds.</p>
<p>She smiles and nods enjoying his attention, thinking it’s probably not a good idea to date a doctor from a rival hospital. She’ll probably never see him again except maybe from afar at a medical conference.</p>
<p>That first impression of Dr. Neil Melendez, though, is a keeper.</p>
<p>TBC...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neil hadn’t expected her to call. Hoped, maybe, but not expected.</p><p>His encounter with San Jose Methodist resident Dr. Claire Browne had been not just pleasant, but enlightening. A breath of fresh air. He isn’t proud of his grumpiness when they first met and chooses to focus on how quickly she’d won him over with her compassionate bedside manner, quick wit, and sharp medical instincts.</p><p>Even he wouldn’t have thought to look for the tiny fracture she’d discovered in his ankle.</p><p>Maybe it’s because he doesn’t expect her to call that he allows himself to be intrigued. After all, he’s no longer with Jessica, a sad fizzle to their long relationship and engagement. Why not let himself get a little enamored by a beautiful, brilliant young doctor.</p><p>So, when he receives a call from her, he’s too shocked to even respond for a few moments. But when he finds his voice, his temptation to flirt with her speaks volumes.</p><p><em>‘Took you long enough to call,</em>’ he says. Her laughter stirs up a lightness in his mood.</p><p>She’s heard through the grapevine that his team will be doing a piggyback heart transplant. He teases her with accusations that she’s checking up on him, which elicits another sweet laugh from her.</p><p>But it turns out that the patient had been considering her hospital before being wooed over to St. Bonaventure based on the power of <em>his</em> reputation. She seems to find a similar pleasure in taunting him about that part – at least Neil has mostly gotten over his soreness with Andrews over the situation.</p><p><em>‘Can I come over and observe?’</em> she asks.</p><p>Neil doesn’t hesitate to agree to it.</p><p>He’s a little nervous about another set of eyes scrutinizing him during this particular surgery. Mostly, though, he’s eager to impress her. The urge to show off calls for careful restraint on his part. He introduces her to his team, observes Murphy’s curious reaction and bristles at Kalu’s clear attraction that Claire deflects. He watches as she wins them over within minutes because that’s the type of woman she is.</p><p>Due to the complexity of the procedure, he’s also been given Dr. Coyle’s residents – Reznick who sizes up Claire as the competition and Park who takes Claire’s presence in stride as he does most things.</p><p>The situation goes well until they run into a problem when they discover the patient’s aortic aneurysm and it looks like they’ll have to call the surgery off. Claire sits quietly aside as they brainstorm suggestions, listening to recommendation after recommendation get shot down.</p><p>And in a calmly assured way, she offers a brilliant solution.</p><p>Reznick had mentioned resecting the dilated tissue, which Neil shot down. Piping up from the back of the room, Claire suggested dissecting the entire abnormal section and shortening the ascending aorta. Reznick had rolled her eyes, irritated at the intrusion until she caught onto the idea and recommended a Teflon graft to have enough aorta to plug in the donor heart. A modified David procedure.</p><p>At which point, even Reznick seemed impressed.</p><p>They get sign-off on the surgery and Claire watches from the gallery slightly apart from Andrews and Aoki who consider her with only mild curiosity. Neil even throws a few questions her way, which she easily answers. It all goes smoothly until he has to rebuild the entire ascending aorta.</p><p>It’s as if he can feel her eyes on him, urging him on past his irritation with Andrews and concern of the risks to the surgery. It’s a comfort to know she’s up there believing he will prevail.</p><p>When they finally get a heartbeat, he sighs in relief and looks up to meet her eyes, bypassing both Andrews and Aoki to take in her beaming smile at his accomplishment. For a moment, he wonders what it would be like to work alongside her, in concert as he gets to see up close how her marvelous mind works.</p><p>Then he shakes off the thought by wondering if she’ll be interested instead in grabbing that dinner with him.</p><p>That option flies off the table after he gets out of surgery and is informed of the round of press appearances and public accolades he’s obligated to do after such a groundbreaking and successful surgery. As his team finishes up rounds and checks on the patient, she wishes him an understated goodbye in his office with her thanks. She helps him into his blazer to make sure he’s presentable before meeting with Andrews and the press.</p><p>Another time, he promises himself as he watches her retreat from his office. Soon, another time.</p><p>TBC ...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A little bit of a longer one here! (And a little heated.)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neil Melendez is the last person Claire expects to sit down next to her in the loud, darkened bar she’s sought out across town. Then she vaguely remembers that the formerly trendy bar five years past its prime isn’t that far from his hospital.</p><p>Claire’s first thought is that he’ll be a worthy distraction tonight if she can get him into bed. And then the shame of this notion about her friend sneaks up on her. It forces her to take a long pull of her drink as she chases a return to the numbness she’s settled into over the past weeks.</p><p><em>‘Friend? Is that really what we are</em>,’ she considers to herself. She hasn’t really heard from Neil in a while.</p><p>They’d texted for a bit after she’d come over to watch his surgery. Sure, she’d been extremely interested in the procedure, but she’d also had the sudden impulse to see him again. Maybe test the waters of their initial attraction. She’d been lonely in her residency, making a lot of good professional connections but not many true friends. And if there weren’t any sparks between them, maybe she’d score a mentor out of it.</p><p>The results had been mixed.</p><p>He’d seemed on the verge of flirting, not quite openly but around the edges. Maybe because they were in a work setting, he’d toned it down. His words remained professional, but those charming, dancing eyes told another story, especially when she'd offered a solution to their surgical problem.</p><p>For a moment before she’d said her goodbyes, Claire had thought Neil would make a move; considered making one herself. But then the moment passed. He’d had to run off to a press conference, and she needed to turn in if she didn’t want to be dead on her feet for her next shift.</p><p>And that had been that. A few texts here and there. An unfulfilled offer to help with some research. Another contact over a referral request. A notice about a CME session he was teaching. All very friendly and relaxed exchanges that eventually became a few and far between trickle.</p><p>He'd mentioned that he was vying for Chief of Surgery, so she assumed he'd been consumed with that pursuit that left little time for new relationships. Of course, she’d found out later the likelier reason – he’d started dating a co-worker. Another doctor who he’d known since his internship days and who Claire had heard was an amazing badass.</p><p>Oh well, so much for that.</p><p>The messenger for that bit of news had been Dr. Jared Kalu who she’d run into at a club. He’d remembered her, although she’d had to be reminded of how they’d met. They’d ended up sleeping together eventually – for a while, actually. And discretely.</p><p>For whatever reason, she hadn’t wanted Neil to know.</p><p>Jared didn’t understand but agreed to keep their affair between them. That she couldn’t move past that fling stage led to their relationship fizzling out, amicably at least. But she’d felt bad for not recognizing until too late what a sensitive, sweet soul he was, not cut out for casual affairs.</p><p>Claire had reached out to Neil at the beginning of her third year when she’d been tapped for her first solo surgery – the first of her class of residents. She’d been nervous, but didn’t want t show it in front of her co-residents or bosses. Neil had been immensely supportive despite their sporadic contact. He’d spent his lunch break talking her through her approach, answered all her questions, and calmed her nerves. He’d teased her in that way of his, but let her now he that believed in her and she’d do great.</p><p>Other than her estranged mother who’d stumbled back into her life, Neil was the only person with whom she shared her silly pre-surgery selfie. And he was the first person she’d contacted when she finished it successfully. </p><p>Half an hour later, her world had tilted and crumbled around her as she learned her mother had been killed in a drunk driving accident – drunk from the bottle of champagne Claire had hidden as a gift of celebration for herself.</p><p>So here she sits. Another bar, a few more drinks, an eye toward which potential anonymous guy will be open to a night of no strings attached sex to help her numb the burning anger and pain she can’t shake. But when Neil slides into the stool next to her, looking like hell himself, she’s not quite sure what to make of it, even without the haze of the alcohol she’s consumed before his arrival.</p><p><em>‘I got dumped last night,’</em> he says, ordering an expensive whiskey, neat. <em>‘What’s your excuse?’</em></p><p><em>‘I got my mom killed,’</em> she replies, not knowing why she blurts that out. She blames the alcohol and those intense brown eyes of his that seem to see right into her.</p><p>They sit in companionable silence as Neil sips his drink. Claire doesn’t bother to order another. The bartender tries to hide his surprise.</p><p>When he finishes his whiskey, Neil invites her back to his place, and she agrees.</p><p>They stay up half the night keeping each other company, first silently as they sit side by side sharing some takeout and looking out into the city from his patio. And then finally they begin talking.</p><p>Neil slowly pours his heart out about never being enough for the women in his life. Watching his dreams of a family fade away again. Claire finally breaks down about her guilt and grief for a mother she couldn’t save, who’d left her alone despite all Claire had suffered for her.</p><p>They both express doubts about whether they’ll recover, whether they’ll ever truly be happy. Or if this sadness will sink into their bones and become who they are.</p><p>Hearing that Neil feels as low as she does twists something in Claire. Finally, she again experiences emotions beyond her own despair, and it’s anguish over the way the man next to her is hurting. Sad for him because he doesn’t deserve it.</p><p>Feeling tired but bold, she chides him for probably throwing himself into work while pretending he’s fine, hoping no one will guess he’s thoroughly crushed with heartbreak. Neil smiles, sheepish, leading her to believe she’s pegged it right.</p><p>He suggests, but doesn’t push, the idea of a therapist. Claire doesn’t respond, but she doesn’t say no which seems enough for him.</p><p>All the while, Neil remains calm through both their outpourings of grief. He’s undaunted by her quiet sobbing, and finally holds her as they settle into a weary calm. Rather, he seems content to let the dampness of her tears seep into his shirt and spend long minutes rubbing her back and making idle conversation as the moistness dries.</p><p>They fall asleep on the couch in each other’s arms.</p><p>And when they wake up just past sunrise, Claire feels like something closer to herself, not the grieving daughter or the prowling vixen or even the ambitious surgeon. Just Claire.</p><p>It should be awkward, waking up with Neil like this. But it isn’t. Adjusting them into a more comfortable position, he rubs her arm that’s laying across him and brushes unruly hair from her face. And it’s not just a sense of calm that returns to her. She feels gratitude and acceptance and comfort.</p><p>So, she kisses him, searching for more. It’s a sleepy meshing of her mouth to his, first probing and then more intense.</p><p>Neil responds by carrying her to his bedroom and returning the favor.</p><p>They make love slowly, wanting to hold on to the early morning, slightly hazy passion. Their recent slumber has their emotions un-shielded and right on the surface.</p><p>This is so different for Claire. Not the pulsing frenzy of pushing something away and tamping down a familiar darkness but rather the sweet tingling of connection that both scares and satisfies her. And yes, maybe she is using him like the others, but he seems to need this too.</p><p>No, that’s not true. He’s nothing like the others. Neil is something else. With him she can’t forget herself, she wants only to feel everything.</p><p>He draws those sensations out of her, moment by moment, touch by touch. He strips her and lets his hands – those talented hands – explore her body at a maddening pace. Whether it’s a playful pluck or teasing trail of fingers as he strokes her or a bold gripping of her hips as he begs her to open herself to him, he urges her to be louder, to hold him tighter; pleads with her not to hold back and to let him see her.</p><p>And she does.</p><p>When he looks into her eyes from above her, lost in her body, lost in his pleasure for her, she can’t help but caress the side of his face, kissing him soundly. She murmurs against his lips that she wants him and that he’s good enough; that he’s better than anyone deserves. It’s too much for him and he buries his face in the curve of her neck, clutching her hip and shoulder as he finds his release. She feels a dampness against her skin that could be her own sweat or the trail of kisses he’s placing along her neck. Or maybe it’s the tears he’s been holding back all night.</p><p>She doesn’t investigate, just holds him as he had her and they eventually drift back into a soft sleep once more.</p><p>Claire wakes up again in his arms, this time naked and in his bed. He kisses her first this time, and they let the morning emerge around them. He coaxes her into sharing a shower where they have lingering sex again amid the steam and each other’s warm skin, slick with moisture.</p><p>And then she gathers her things and leaves.</p><p>They’d been grieving and then they’d been each other’s comfort. Claire doesn’t need more than that. Probably can’t handle more than that.</p><p>And as the hours separate her from the experience, she knows she won’t be seeking out a bar tonight or any other night in the near future. What she felt with Neil, she wants to hold onto, however that turns out.</p><p>A few days later, Neil asks if she wants to join him for a run, and Claire eagerly agrees.</p><p>TBC ...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neil finds himself a little bit confused about his life these days.</p><p>He’d suffered another sad but mostly amicable breakup a few months ago. He’d had amazing rebound sex with an intriguing woman who’d been in his periphery for a while. And now they’re … what? Not exactly dating, but not <em>NOT</em> dating?</p><p>If he counts all the times he and Claire have met before or after work for a run, the occasional drink or dinner, the hilariously disastrous night of bowling, then yes they are dating.</p><p>But they haven’t slept together again since that one night, recognizing it had been something they’d done in response to the moment. Not something casual, but also not exactly ordinary. They both had a lot to figure out before they jumped into bed with each other or anyone else for that matter.</p><p>Claire started seeing a therapist after he’d lobbed the suggestion at her. He’d taken a few vacation days when he truly didn’t feel like putting on a brave face at work.</p><p>There’d been a hiccup when Jared had caught them on one of their morning runs, probably the day he’d played a dirty trick on her just to see the cute indignation on her face and then glow of her humor as she chased him down the street. His resident had probed him about his intentions, asking whether he and Claire were seeing each other, almost sulking. But Neil swiftly deflected the line of questioning. He’d thought about cooling it with Claire and even mentioned it to her before she’d reminded him that they weren’t doing anything wrong.</p><p>Because they’re just friends. Friends who are not dating.</p><p>Except they see each other at least once a week, sometimes more. He thinks about her all the time; thinks about their night together too many times to count.</p><p>And now he finds himself standing around a brewery waiting for her to join him after he’d practically begged for her company. She’d been reluctant, not wanting to take time off during her quest for chief resident. But he’d finally won her over. After all, it’s a fundraiser for a former patient and a good cause.</p><p>Marta is as joyful as always, interrupting a very awkward moment between Aaron and Shaun’s friend Lea over some interpersonal drama. When she and her wife offer a tour, Neil’s reluctant. Claire should be there any minute.</p><p>His phone buzzes. His heart speeds up in anticipation. Neil tells the group he’ll catch up and meets her in front of the brewery.</p><p>When he sees her approaching, looking beautiful without even trying, he knows he’s in trouble. A minute into the hug he’s greeted her with and he’s holding her still, taking in the full scale of her loveliness. She doesn’t seem to mind.</p><p>She’s the right girl. It feels like the right time. Why isn’t he kissing her?</p><p><em>‘You know what,’</em> he says to her, ‘<em>I think I’m going to kiss you now. You game?</em>’ Yes, she is game. And he feels the earth move as his lips touch hers.</p><p>Except it keeps on moving and that’s definitely wrong.</p><p>Finally registering what’s happening, the earthquake they’re in the middle of, Neil holds onto Claire, gripping her tightly as he looks for a safe space to secure themselves. He guides them away from the brewery entrance and holds onto a nearby lamppost until the shaking stops. They can hear terrible sounds of panic, crumbling, and crashing coming from inside the building. Neil keeps her body enveloped into his.</p><p>He isn’t going to lose her now.</p><p>It seems like hours that they stand on the street holding on to each other and the lamppost, pleading with the universe to see them to the other side of this tragedy. When the shaking subsides, they unfurl themselves and take in the horror of the spot they’d run from. Through the window they see destruction, fallen beams, disorientation and terror in the faces of the survivors.</p><p>And then they get to work.</p><p>Once Neil locates Aaron and learns that Lea is missing, he and Claire move around the room treating people and assessing more serious injuries until a trauma unit arrives. Audrey had called before they even got to the front door of the brewery, Neil with a death grip on Claire’s hand throughout the conversation. So he knows reinforcements will be there soon.</p><p>Right before the St. Bonaventure H.U.R.T. team arrives, they discover Marta is in more dire straits than they’d thought. Claire jumps in with the suggestion that they need to operate on site – Neil asks and gets permission for Claire to assist. Audrey gives him the oddest look beforehand, which Neil vows to dissect later.</p><p>Then he experiences another side to Claire’s brilliance – her commitment to patients, her ingenuity, her steadiness under pressure. He regrets not having the opportunity to work alongside her for her residency, knowing how satisfying it is to mentor a young surgeon of her caliber. But his regret is only fleeting.  </p><p>He’s more appreciative that he gets to be her friend, hopefully more. In this way, she’s already made an impression on him.</p><p>After the aftershock and endless triage, after Claire leaves the site when called in to her own hospital, after a string of emergency surgeries, almost losing one of his residents, hours of working down the patient overflow, after the losses and grief, Neil makes his way home and collapses.</p><p>Ten minutes later, Claire is at his door and then in his bed as they both give into what they’ve wanted all along.</p><p><em>‘Does this mean we’re dating,’</em> she asks when they finally find themselves sated and enjoying the silence of his bedroom. He laughs.</p><p>Absolutely.</p><p>TBC ...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Claire feels as if her life has finally taken a good turn.</p>
<p>Her residency is as stressful as usual. She’s still grieving her mother, though not as fiercely as those early days. The long hours and drive to be the very best leave little free time and rest.</p>
<p>And yet she’s also happy. She can say it without qualification, which her therapist thinks is quite a feat from their first session. A certain cocky surgeon at St. Bonaventure has at least a small role to play in that development, although he’s always quick to point out that Claire gets all the credit for committing to being healthy enough to take the chance.</p>
<p>Claire had felt her foundation figuratively and literally shaking underneath her with Neil surrounding her. And it’s the safest she could ever imagine feeling under the circumstances.</p>
<p>They’ve set a cozy rhythm in the nine months of officially dating. They don’t always have the time to see each other, but they watch their relationship settle into the foreground of their lives. He never goes to bed without at least texting her. She spends Sunday mornings with him, delivering coffee in bed even if she has to work – or more commonly, using it as a ploy to get him to make her breakfast. They still run together, occasionally, though both enjoy a different kind of physical exertion when they spend time together.</p>
<p>Neil tells her he loves her during their vacation in Miami, arms around her as they sit on the beach late one night. She’s frozen, unprepared for the surge in emotion. It doesn’t deter him. He just smiles down at her in that patient way of his.</p>
<p>A week later, when he stops by her apartment after a 36-hour shift to fix her garbage disposal, she tells him she loves him too.</p>
<p><em>‘I know,’</em> he says, grinning and kissing her.</p>
<p>They keep things quiet, rather enjoying the bubble they’ve created together. They’re not doing anything wrong, but they don’t want people in their business, either at her hospital or his.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s all too good to last.</p>
<p>The bombshell comes at a hospital-wide meeting on a Friday afternoon, no one knows what for. And then the announcement: San Jose Methodist has undergone a merger. The hospital will be closed and its resources redistributed or offloaded.</p>
<p>“Resources” meaning personnel, too.</p>
<p>Claire’s heart drops. All her hard work to position herself for a chief resident position in her fifth year? All the relationships she’s built? All the long hours and microaggressions and toiling to earn her spot in the program? It’s all disappearing as she figures out where the hell she’ll be spending her final year of residency.</p>
<p>As it turns out, management has already arranged it. Sort of.</p>
<p>Her resident class is good. Other hospitals want them. They’ll be split between SF Muni and St. Bonaventure. Or they can try and find their own program, but everyone knows that’s the harder and likely most unsuccessful path given their timetable.</p>
<p>It isn’t even a done deal. They’ll do a trial-run at each hospital and the decision will then be out of their hands as the two benefiting hospitals horse-trade the leftover residents like commodities and not people.</p>
<p>And for Claire, that means figuring out how to explain that SF Muni is her only option since working with Neil at St. Bonaventure is out of the question.</p>
<p>Claire finds out later that night that at the same time as her meeting, Neil had been called into a senior management meeting along with his colleagues. He’d had to hide his concern at hearing they’d potentially be considering his girlfriend as a new resident from the closing San Jose Methodist Hospital. Only his ex, Dr. Lim, had picked up on Neil’s reaction, but she didn’t say anything, not even after the meeting broke up.</p>
<p>The first thing Neil does as he walks into her apartment and finds her strumming on her guitar as a stress reliever is to take her in his arms. He tells her that no matter where she lands, she’ll be exceptional and he’ll support her 100%.</p>
<p>Claire is placed first at SF Muni. The commute is awful, her personal life even worse since she and Neil have even less time than usual to spend together. She slips into bed beside him late at night and feels his lips kissing her goodbye as he leaves for work in the morning. Low on the hierarchy at SF Muni, she works weekends, limiting their interactions even more.</p>
<p>But they have to make it work.</p>
<p>This will be their new reality once the higher ups decide who’s going where. Neil has made some phone calls and has it on good authority that Claire has risen to the top of the list at SF Muni. They will lobby hard for her.</p>
<p>They decide to keep their relationship a secret during her stint at St. Bonaventure. They don’t want things to be even more awkward for Claire. SF Muni is practically a done deal. And if need-be, he’ll reveal their relationship during the negotiations, but not beforehand if it isn’t necessary.</p>
<p>What neither prepared themselves for, though, is how much they love working together.</p>
<p>Even more, Claire just clicks with Neil's team. She and Jared had long ago fallen into a casual friendship, made even more comfortable after Jared became engaged to the former patient he’d met soon after breaking up with Claire. And she really enjoys working with Dr. Murphy. They get along well, and Shaun seems to appreciate that she doesn’t expect him to adjust his behavior for her.</p>
<p>Claire thought working together would be a strain on their relationship, but it turns out she and Neil like spending all their time together at work and at home.</p>
<p>Three weeks in, things explode yet again.</p>
<p>Claire is assigned to a Dr. Coyle when she draws the short straw on a VIP surgery Neil and Andrews are leading. Things start okay until Coyle begins flirting with her, putting his hands on her in a way that seem overly friendly. She tries to get Jared or Shaun to trade, but they won’t budge. She’s hesitant to take it to Neil for the trouble it may cause.</p>
<p>Sure enough, the next day, Coyle tries to grope and kiss her as their patient rests not two feet away; calls her a whore for not wanting to sleep with him when she’d put out for Jared once upon a time. He threatens to get her kicked out of the program for insubordination when she soundly rejects him and calls him out.</p>
<p>Claire supposes it’s better than him knowing about her and Neil.</p>
<p>Because Neil is in surgery all day, Jared is the first to figure out what happens when he finds Claire in the residents’ breakroom shaking as she tries to refill her coffee tumbler. By the time Neil gets out of surgery and she’s able to get him alone, Jared has flown off the handle by threatening Dr. Coyle and getting himself fired for his trouble. He'd felt guilty for not taking her seriously, for bragging about their past relationship to Coyle in the first place. It's all too much for Claire to process.</p>
<p>Upon hearing what all he'd missed, Neil silently grabs his things and leaves. He doesn't need to tell her that if he doesn’t get out of there, he’ll likely go down a similar path.</p>
<p>But before stalking out of his office, he kisses her on the forehead not caring who's watching, though the area outside his office is empty. She doesn’t see him again until late that night. They don’t talk about it, he just holds her so tight.</p>
<p>The next day, she finds out Coyle has been fired. She suspects both Lim and Neil had insisted on it. They can’t save Jared’s job, but they can at least get rid of the toxic source of the entire messy situation.</p>
<p>The following week, Coyle is hired at SF Muni.</p>
<p>And because there’s no way Claire can work there now, it means the chaos that has disrupted her perfectly content life is complete.</p>
<p>TBC ...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s not that Neil hates having Claire working at St. Bonaventure with him. Quite the opposite. The cost, though. He doesn’t love that.</p>
<p>He sees her every day, works alongside her, mentors her along with Murphy and Coyle’s stray residents Reznick and Park. There is no hiding how special she is, and he doesn’t think so just because he’s in love with her. </p>
<p>Not that it matters much anymore. They’ve decided to put their relationship on hold for a while as she finishes out the last year of her residency.</p>
<p>And every night he misses her like hell.</p>
<p>They struggle with it in the beginning, keeping the intensity of their relationship under wraps. That they had been friends for a while isn’t a secret. People assumed they’d met professionally and kept in touch – which isn’t too far from the truth. And with everything that happened with Coyle, not to mention getting assigned the man’s former residents, well, it hasn’t been the smoothest transition.</p>
<p>The harassment Claire experienced, all her hard work in her previous residency, the disruption to both their lives – it weighs on her, Neil can tell.</p>
<p>He wants to comfort her, does comfort her in as professional a manner as he can some days. She’s lost so much, most notably her routine and her chance to be chief resident, which went to Dr. Park. And she’s lost him, too, in a way. Or maybe his guilt conjured that perspective of things.</p>
<p>And yet it doesn’t stop her from being a star. People really do love working with her from the other attending surgeons and department staff to the nurses and the people down in the cafeteria.</p>
<p>Putting their relationship on hold doesn’t exactly mean that they’ve stopped seeing each other – it’s confusing but neither seems ready or able to end things. With Claire trying to prove herself with the busy fifth-year resident schedule, it isn’t as if she has a lot of free time anyway.</p>
<p>Sleepovers are the first thing to go. They still run together on occasion, but dinners and weekend plans become a rarity as does the amazing sex they were having. It all feels too much like sneaking around because they’re doing something wrong rather than to preserve their privacy like before.</p>
<p>It isn’t perfect, but it’s how it has to be they tell themselves. And it works. For a while.</p>
<p>The breaking point comes when they disagree over a patient – a very sick little girl where every conventional treatment option has failed. Claire suggests an experimental procedure. She argues with him and Reznick over wanting to give the little girl a fighting chance absent any other workable measure.</p>
<p>Neil thinks it’s too risky and he doesn’t want to build up the patient’s hopes over such a shaky treatment plan that isn’t approved and has pretty severe side effects. But Claire goes behind his back to the patient’s parents who insist they try.</p>
<p>Neil is furious. And he hates that it’s directed towards the woman he loves.</p>
<p>Glassman orders an emergency IRB to hear everyone out and loops in all of the management team and Aoki. Claire makes her case, barely sparing him a glance, which only further irritates him; his questioning during her presentation makes no attempt to hide his displeasure.</p>
<p>In a surprise move, she insists the group hear from the parents and the little girl who shows them a fierce longing to fight rather than waste away waiting for a magical cure that won’t reach her in time. Even being so young, she understands the risks and asks the doctors to take the leap with her.</p>
<p>The next morning, he sits with his patient for a while as she rests comfortably from a successful surgery.</p>
<p>By the end of the day, he’s insisted Claire be taken off his service.</p>
<p>Neil sat stoically beside Claire in Lim’s office as the Chief of Surgery broke that news to her. He felt her anger and disappointment as he walked out and left her to speak further with Lim about how her rotation would be adjusted.</p>
<p>Nursing a heavy pull of whiskey, he doesn’t have to wait long before she shows up at his house after work, using her key and slamming his door behind her.</p>
<p>She accuses him of holding her back, of dismissing her good ideas. And kicking her off his service? After everything she’s been through, how can he deal her another loss? How can he stand to hurt her this deeply?</p>
<p>Finally, she tells him just how wrong he was to doubt her medical opinion citing the IRB’s vote in her favor over his objections. Her words are laced more in despair than rage, and he takes all of it without saying a word until she says that.</p>
<p>Claire is left speechless when Neil reveals that <em>he</em> was the deciding vote for getting approval along with Lim and Glassman. She made a strong case and he backed her against a more cautious Andrews and Aoki.</p>
<p>That seems to defuse the situation. Once she calms down and sits not too closely beside him nursing her own beer – he still keeps her favorite in his fridge – it gives him an opportunity to explain.</p>
<p>He didn’t kick her off his service because he’s mad at her, although he’s plenty annoyed with the way she handled things. He kicked her off his service because he doesn’t want to hide anymore how much he’s in love with her.</p>
<p>Watching her with the patient, fighting to do everything she could to heal her? Seeing how she brilliantly convinced her colleagues to take a step toward innovation, even at the risk of his displeasure? Inspiring him to be a better doctor, a better person? It had all been an exasperating, infuriating, amazing experience.</p>
<p>And yet despite the excitement of going toe to toe with Dr. Browne, throughout it all, he just wanted to be here sitting beside his Claire. He misses her and loves her and no amount of professional excellence will overpower that.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to be her mentor or her boss. He wants to be her lover. Her partner. He doesn’t want to wait for it. So, he asked that she be taken off his service because even if she doesn’t feel the same way, he can’t go on like this.</p>
<p>Claire doesn’t actually swoon over his heartfelt gesture made without consulting her. But she understands it, and she takes him in her arms and holds him for a long time.</p>
<p>He tells her that seeing her with that little girl makes him think of how hard she’ll fight for a family of their own. He wanted that before life blew up in their faces.</p>
<p>When she replies that she wants that too, he kisses her long and deeply.</p>
<p><em>‘Then let’s do it,’</em> he says and carries her to his bedroom to continue their reconciliation.</p>
<p>Laying together naked and cuddling in his bed, she approves him telling people that she’s apologized for undermining his authority even if she isn’t sorry at all. Although it should have annoyed him, he sees it as a quirky glimpse into what their lives will be like together. He rather likes the preview.</p>
<p>The next morning, Dr. Lim thinks they’re sitting again in front of her to rehash the decision to take Claire off Neil’s service. What she gets is a different conversation entirely. A  revelation of their relationship and how long it’s been going on. The reality that they’ve fooled everyone by working pretty seamlessly alongside each other. And finally, the first steps to making their situation work with HR, management, and their colleagues.</p>
<p>Turns out Lim isn’t quite as shocked as they’d expected.</p>
<p>After all, she knows Neil very well, and she’d gotten a glimpse of them together the night of the earthquake. She concedes that they’ve been great at hiding their relationship.</p>
<p>And just like that, Claire Browne isn’t Neil’s resident anymore, just a colleague. And even better, she’s become the love of his life for all the world to see.</p>
<p>TBC ...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Claire and Neil don’t consider their lives very remarkable. That doesn’t stop people at St. Bonaventure from treating them as some sort of spectacle at times.</p>
<p>They don't see the big deal. Claire finishes out her residency and she and Neil get on with things. That’s that.</p>
<p>The simple graduation ceremony had a nice sense of closure for the residents before they did the quick transition to their new lives. Park moved on to a fellowship in Arizona to be closer to his son and ex-wife. Reznick opted for a fellowship in L.A. where she’d caught the eye of a hotshot surgeon who wanted to steer a research project with her. Murphy would be going into the neurology residency at St. Bonaventure where Claire has also opted to stay to specialize in cardio-thoracic medicine alongside Neil. Even Jared had landed on his feet, finishing out his residency at a prestigious program in Colorado.</p>
<p>At the reception, they both relaxed a bit from their usual strict professionalism. Claire casually drapes an arm around Neil’s waist as she joins his conversation with the head of the oncology department. Later, Neil places a kiss at the crown of her head as he hands her a refreshed glass of wine. They arrive together and leave together as they have many times before for their shifts at the hospital.</p>
<p>Life goes on.</p>
<p>Yet people often want to hear about the continuing saga of Neil and Claire, which again, doesn’t seem that interesting from their perspective.  </p>
<p>Things that seem more interesting to them: after a break to work on personal projects and research, Neil gets a new crop of residents and leads a surgery that makes him a minor celebrity for a while (for which everyone teases him). Andrews finds his life turned sideways after his wife gives birth to twins.</p>
<p>Glassman retires and the board chooses an outside candidate to replace him – a stodgy but mostly well-meaning veteran pediatrician from Southern California. Lim hires two new surgeons whose quirkiness seem better suited for the gossip coffers.</p>
<p>Shaun and Claire continue to learn and grow as doctors, making names for themselves among their colleagues.</p>
<p>But none of that matters. Always it's <em>‘what are Neil and Claire up to?'</em></p>
<p>They don’t mind too much – it has become somewhat of a cute St. Bonaventure story. Neil has taken to answering with a simple, <em>‘I got myself hitched to a brilliant surgeon and lived happily ever after.’</em></p>
<p>For them, happily ever after starts with a nice wedding six months after Claire's residency ends. Then the new house, followed by kid number one and kid number two with some professional excellence mixed in.</p>
<p>Not that there are never entertaining sparks. Whether it’s a clueless visiting ER doctor that sets her sights on Neil or a smitten social worker who didn’t quite do his homework about Claire’s significant other, the hospital staff tend to rally around the couple to everyone’s amusement.    </p>
<p>And between Neil and Claire, there are arguments on occasion and hurt feelings quickly resolved. But mostly, their lives involve a lot of love they’d been craving for their whole lives.</p>
<p>Sometimes they joke about what would have happened if she’d gotten her first choice residency under him rather than San Jose Methodist. They like to make up scenarios about different things that could have occurred over the years. Would she and Jared have lasted? (Probably not.) Would things with Coyle have turned out the same way? (Probably so.)</p>
<p>Was it inevitable that she get kicked off his service at least once? (Likely.) Would they have become friends at some point (More likely.) Would they have had an instant attraction that they fought until they couldn’t anymore? (Most likely.)</p>
<p>Their imagination can’t conceive of a reality where they don’t see being together as worth it all. Even if it feels inevitable, they always appreciate how lucky they are to have found each other.</p>
<p>And for that reason, the saga of Neil and Claire is maybe a good one for the storybooks after all.</p>
<p>The End</p>
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